First off, some more history.
Throughout the 1960’s the discrimination against minority races was an issue that everyone tried to ignore but it would not go away.
When Harold Wison and the Labour party came into government for a second term it had become a major election issue.
The Conservative party knew they were going to lose and pulled out everything they could to grab the popular vote and this caused a violent backlash against minorities when they were accused of taking ‘British’ jobs and ‘Britsh’ council housing and that immigration from the colonies to the UK should be stopped.(If anybody remembers Enoch Powell’s infamous and inflammatry ‘River of blood’ speech that was what set the tone in working class districts)
The irony is that in the 50’s it was the Conservative party who, on seeing the need for a larger workforce than was actually available, had encouraged and in fact financed the passage of immigrants to the UK.
Back to the late 60’s and the Labour government passed the Race Relations act which did much what you might expect it to do, such as make certain patterns of behaviour a criminal offence. This was later amended and also was augmented by the Equal Opportunities act which forbade discrimination against any group on irrelevant grounds such as sex, race, religion, sexual orientation.
An important part of that original act of parliament was its scope, only a one line statement but that line is at the very root of why relations between police and ethnic minorities in the UK is now so poor.
Almost everyone had to comply with that act except for the police.This line was only included because of lobbying by the judiciary and police and they had the ear of many voting Members of Parliament.It was only included at the last reading of the bill to secure enough votes to pass it.
Effectively the police could not be sued or prosecuted for racist behaviour either within its own ranks or in its treatment of the public.
Nearly every case brought by minority race police officers against their employers has been brought under Equal Opportunities legislation or European Human Rights acts and not the Race Relations acts.
The history of police abuse and a failure to do anything about these issues for thirty years, and the impotence of the law to restrain police from their behaviour which would have been illegal for any other person is the major reason why minority groups mistrust the police so much.
Putting all this down means nothing unless I give you examples.
In the UK a raft of very repressive laws was passed to keep Napoleonic war veterans off the streets, begging and the like. War pensions for non-commissioned ranks and the war disabled did not exist,hence a large number of disaffected and potentially revolutionary men were on the streets.Among these laws was the now infamous ‘sus’ laws.
The ‘suspicion’ law provided the means to convict and incarcerate any person who was suspected of being likely to commit a crime. Another part of these laws was the conspiracy law. Here a person could be charged with conspiring to commit an offence with a person who was likely to commit an offence.
The standard of evidence was very loose indeed, if you were carrying a crowbar then it was ‘going equipped for crime’ but other than being informed upon the only evidence required was the word of a police officer.
Not hard to see the problems with that really but these laws were passed at a time when standards were very differant (early 1800’s) but they were disastrously applied to modern life with its values.
Forward to the 1970’s and 80’s.
Virtually eveyr police force in the UK with the exception of the Metropolitan police in London dropped the use of these archaic rules as either unworkable, immoral or plain unfair.
The Metropolitan police used them differantly.Under powers provided by these laws they massively increased the use of stop and search of persons who they felt like searching, no warrants are required (in the US this would have soon been jumped upon by civil rights groups)If you refused on the grounds that there was no reasonable cause to this you were charged with obstructing the police in their duty, plus the matter would be discussed between the suspect and a few burly policemen down the cop shop.There were proven incidents of assaults by police and several black men died in police custody.
One celebrated case a black man had had a health checkup for insurance purposes, was arrested very soon after when walking home and was very badly beaten up - his hearing was damaged. Police claimed he had been drunk and abusive and was already bruised and battered but lost their case and paid compensation yet no police officer was ever disciplined.
Back to stop and search - minorities in London account for less than 30 % of the population and yet were subjected to over 85% of stop and search. One case an A-level student on his way to college was waiting for a bus when he was arrested and convicted on the sus law.
In the case of Steven Lawrence he was attacked and murdered by five white youths but when the police began to deal with the case they assumed without any evidence whatsoever that Steven must have been a drug dealer and gave it a low priority.
Eyewitnesses gave police the names of the youths but police did nothing at all about this until days later.One of the youths was actually observed dumping clothes from a plastic bag by a police officer and yet those clothes were never retrieved.It is highly likely that those clothes bore Stevens blood as it had been a messy killing.
The Conservatives refused to appoint an inquiry into the failure of this police investigation even though further inquiries by private investigators and finally a differant police force concluded that the youths were responsible but that the evidence was too poor to succesfully prosecute.The youths were videotaped talking and joking about his murder and how they had done it but it was taken in a manner that prevented it from being used as evidence of self-confession since no warrant to carry out this surveillance had been granted.
The parents of Steven Lawrenece brught a private prosecution which asked damning questions of the police investigation and even the trial judge recommended and inquiry into police behaviour.
Come a change of government an inquiry was set up which also took into account the performance of police into the investigations of all racist incidents and the racism of the police itself.
That enquiry produced the Macpherson report referred to in the OP.
Judge Macpherson is not known for his wishy washy liberal views, judges seldom are, and his report cited specific cases and practices by the Metropolitan police where they were, without any doubt at all, racist both in practice, and in procedures. ie institutionally racist.
This was accepted wholly by the police and they have since been included within the scope of the race relations act.
The Macpherson report and the Steven Lawrence affair was the culmination of years of police racism which has been cited as being partly responsible for the riots on Broadwater Farm housing estate where Officer Blakelock was butchered by a mob and another black man found guilty of his murder and who has since been acquitted.
The media realeased details that would never have been permitted just before the trial of the accused man in this trial.Those details were provided by police.
Add to all this the number of men freed having served many years for crimes they never committed, such as the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4, the Darvel brothers, Stefan Kiszchko, and several others and you can see why confidence in the police has fallen in certain areas and why they hardly have the consent of people in those places to enforce the law fairly and effectively and it can be no surprise that police morale has been badly affected.
Unfortuantely William Hague is almost, but not quite, as unpopular now as when the Tories lost power to Labour in the last election and with another election due in less than six months and then you can see that there is less concern for law and order as such and more concern on his part to make themsleves even be noticed by the public who for a large part simply do not see him as a credible Tory leader ,and by extension the party he leads being a comptetant governnment.
William Hague is doing what many desparate and impotent politicians do, he is jumping on any bandwagon.It does not matter to him if there are real flesh and blood bereaved parents feelings to consider.What an asshole.
It is a shame that he seems incapable of seeing that it has been the authoritarianism of times past from 1800’s right the way through to now that is the source of the problems that he so enthusiastically waves his pathetic little flag about.
Democracy is about having a responsible and effective opposition to keep the ruling party in order.
When are we going to get a real and effective oppostion ?
Time to let someone else have their say but I have not finished by any means.